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The confusion among Tsipras supporters in Athens as the creditor terms that are stricter than the ones rejected in the July 5, 2015 referendum win 250 votes out of 300 in the Greek parliament on July 10, 2014. The centre right New Democracy and centre left Pasok parties and other parties support Tsipras, and the far left of Syriza abstains in the vote. Serious damage was done to the economy in the 6 months of Syriza negotiations ending in the referendum, increasing the size of a new bailout. The increase size of the bailout came as a shock in Germany reducing any flexibility for chancellor Merkel in the internal debate within Germany. In addition relations were damaged with the EU by the referendum and Syriza's handling of it. As a result opinion polls showed German support for concessions dropped to a low of 10%, increasing pressure on chancellor Merkel within her CDU party. Analysts say Greeece could lose another 10% drop in output if Greece leaves the eurozone, showing the risks taken by the far left Syriza party and economic mismanagement. Even if it stays within the eurozone Greece faces additional costs with lower tax revenues from the fallout in the economy of events in July 2015. Greek officials say the restrictions on ATM withdrawals to 60 euros a day for each account could stay in place for months. These developments are not taken into account by academics and young people in Greece as they refer to European solidarity. ...

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ECB president, Mario Draghi, is interviewed at his office in Frankfurt by the Wall Street Journal's Blackstone, Karnitschnig, and Thomson. Draghi quotes economist Rudi Dornbusch, who told him in the old days that the Europeans were rich enough to afford paying for it if everybody didn't work. Draghi, was head of the Bank of Italy, before becoming president of the ECB. He is acutely aware of the problems faced by Italy and other countries like Spain which have let labor markets become rigid, with extensive job protections and generous benefits for the unemployed. The result is that employers are reluctant to hire and young people face high unemployment rates- as high as 50% in Spain. For this reason Draghi sees the old social model in Europe as obsolete and already out. Draghi's sees austerity measures and spending cuts with the structural changes underway in Spain, Italy and other countries as the only way to generate economic renewal. On the Long Term Financing Operation launched by the ECB in Dec. 2011, Draghi says there was agreement within the ECB and the decision was unanimous. He makes it one of his objectives to achieve as much consensus as he can, to do what is right for Europe and to do it together with his colleagues in the ECB and the EU. That financing operation, and the binding deficit controls achieved at a recent summit of European leaders, he sees as all part of the pathway to fiscal union. ...

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How companies like Bombay Rayon, Himatsingka, Welspun are putting in new factories, and design to increase exports. The need to diversify for western companies importing Chinese textiles is also helping them.

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The Economist points out (in this cover issue on India-Pakistan relations) several fundamental facts. The first is that the current state of relations betweeen India and Pakistan hurts Pakistan the most. It makes a much smaller country and smaller economy bear the burden of defense against a large neighbor- defense takes up much needed allocation of funds for infrastructure and development, education and healthcare. It also weakens democratic institutions and their development by an overdependence on the military for governance. Poor India-Pakistan relations have significant adverse effects on the U.S. In fighting the Taliban U.S. forces are fighting a force that Pakistan's military helped create and support from its early beginnings as a way to counter Indian influence. With an Indian-Pakistani peace settlement of issues in Kashmir and other outstanding issues the U.S. would be in a significantly better position to disengage from the region, especially when the entire Middle East is moving in a new direction in 2011. Consider the difficulties in establishing peace in Northern Ireland, and between Turkey and Greece, and the difficulties of establishing peace between India and Pakistan cannot be considered even more difficult. Pakistan and India muddle along- neither side is doing much to take the initiative. For the U.S. disengagement from South Asia can be best achieved by pushing for a settlement between the two countries. Pakistan and India have much to gain from a settlement. Considering the progress made in Ireland, such places as Yugoslavia, and in Turkish-Greek relations, there is a lot more that can be done and should be done to bring India and Pakistan together. In Ireland diplomatic efforts were made by U.S. envoy George Mitchell, and in Yugoslavia U.S. envoy Holbrooke made diplomatic efforts towards the Dayton accords. Greek-Turkish relations have advanced to the point where Erdogan and Papandreou, the Greek and Turkish prime ministers, discuss solutions to the Greek debt crisis. This includes options to reduce Greece's defense expenditures in the light of Turkey's new foreign policies. The lack of such efforts to break the deadlock between India and Pakistan by the U.S,. the U.K. and other countries involved in the NATO mission in Afghanistan, the emphasis on a military solution supported first by Gen. McChrystal, and then by by Gen. Petraeus, all show a lack of understanding of the real issues that need to be tackled- issues relating to a peace settlement between India and Pakistan....

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Lally Weymouth of the Washington Post interviews Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak on June 20, 2012. On the negotiations of the P5+1 countries with Iran in Baghdad, Istanbul and Moscow, Barak says the Iranians are simply buying time, hoping that by being a little forthcoming they can delay giving up nuclear weapons programs capabilities and see if the situation changes with a new President in office in the U.S.. The Iranians are trying to reach a "zone of immunity," the way Pakistan and N. Korea did, and it will take a resolute determination on the part of the U.S. the Europeans, the Russians and the Chinese to prevent a nuclear Iran and nuclear proliferation. By the third meeting in Moscow it should be clear whether the Iranians are willing to give up capabilities that lead to nuclear weapons. Ayatollah Khamanei is the person in charge in Iran, but decisions are made collectively with the moderate Ayatollahs still ayatollahs, says Barak. The addition of the Khadima party to the coalition government of prime minister Netanyahu increases Israel's desire for dialogue and seeking progress on a peace with the Palestinian Authority- if not a peace arrangement then even unilateral steps towards peace by both sides. The way forward in Syria is for the U.S. to talk with the Russians about a new government. The important thing is for the removal of the Assad family, the entire Syrian state does not need to be dismantled as happened with the Baath party in Iraq. Israel continues to build a fence in the Sinai facing Egypt, as it fears infiltration during the period of civil strife in Egypt. Israel views Egypt from the standpoint of any future Egyptian government honoring its treaty committments with Israel, otherwise says Barak it is upto Egypt to decide its future government....

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The resurgence of the Pudong District of Shanghai, with large investments, an industrial base, migration to the cities, and favorable location at the mouth of the Yangtze River. Since 1995, 70 skyscrapers and 120 million square metres of floor space according to official estimates, have been built in Pudong. Real estate agency Jones Lang LaSalle says occupancy and rates compare favorably with Manhattan in New York. New York has 10.3% empty space compared to 9.5% for Pudong, and space is leased for $693 per square meter annually in Pudong, 10% higher than in midtown Manhattan. The migration to the cities and a growing middle class have proved skeptics wrong over the years about the ability of real estate developers to fill the space they created. Also helping is the central government's plans to focus investment on Shanghai as the business capital of China.

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Robert Reilly, an assistant to President Reagan, former director of Voice of America, says don't underestimate the importance of what the younger Bush as president called "the vision thing." Efficiency experts like Hoover, and Republican candidates who had business and other professional experience but could not grasp the moral imperative in politics such as Alf Landon (1936), Wendell Wilkie (1940), Thomas Dewey (1944 and 1948) failed to convince voters. Democrats presented ideas like the Fair Deal, New Deal (FDR), New Frontier (Kennedy), Great Society (Johnson) and captured this "vision thing" to win. This is why he is skeptical about Romney as business and management consultant coming in and bringing change with a number of management consultants. Reagan also presented the choice in moral terms which were then translated into how the government would function to fulfill the moral imperative, says Reilly.

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Discussion in China's inner Communist party leadership circles about the way forward for democratic reforms, including free speech, and monitoring of government policy through criticism. This follows an unusually frank sppech in Shenzen in August, by premier Wen. A number of party elders call for further action in democratic reforms for better governance, and to curb corruption. The sense that China is reaching an impasse, and further development beyond what has been achieved in three decades requires democratic freedoms for the people of China. This has the potential to be a signifcant development, because it comes as economic policies of the past will have a harder time working now because of western resistance to high level of Chinese exports. The search for a new economic model may involve soul searching, and new thought on the political models that are needed now.

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The number of supercommuters is up significantly as a result of the drop in home prices and high unemployment. It is up 60% in Manhattan since 2002, up to 59,000 or 3% of the workforce. In the Philadelphia- New Jersey corridor- it is 7.3% according to NYU. Houston saw a large increase between 2002 and 2009. In Maricopa County near Phoenix, 131,000 people or 8.6% of the labor force supercommutes. About 13% of the workforce or 427,000 people supercommute in Texas. Prof. Mitchell Moss of New York University, defines a 100 mile plus commute to get to work as a supercommute. His work at NYU's Rudin Center for Transportation shows 1.15 million people supercommuting in 10 major U.S. metropolitan areas. Employers are showing flexibility not wanting to have to dispose off properties, and employees prefer not to uproot families.

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After the failed Unocal Corp. bid in 2005, China's policy has shifted to taking minority stakes, not taking an active role, and keeping Chinese managers at a distance from U.S. advanced technology. The result is a surge in investment in the U.S. and Canadian energy industry with $17 billion invested since 2010, according to Dealogic. By buying a small stake in a company Chinese government advisors see the opportunity to to get an entry into new markets and gain the exerience and knowledge needed to keep up with new drilling techniques. This comes at a time when China expects to become the world's largest oil consuming country because of the surging use of automobiles in the country, according to the International Energy Agency. Natural gas consumption doubled in China between 2006 and 2010 according to the BP Statistical Review.

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Management changes as Blackberry sales fall by 25% in the last quarter include the exit of founder, Jim Balsillie, from the Board. Also leaving are Jim Rowan, the chief operating officer, and David Yach, the chief technology officer. RIM shares are now down 75% this year, falling to $13.73 on March 29, 2012. In the 4th quarter ending March 3, 2012, revenue decreased by 25% compared to same quarter prior year. Blackberry is facing unsold new models of products in stores and is writing off $267 million in unsold Blackberry 7 models. Blackberry 7 models are its latest product introduction. The iPhone now outsells the Blackberry in its home market of Canada. In a conference call, Thorsten Heins, the new CEO, said the company was conducting a strategic review including the option of selling the company.

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Thomas Sargent of New York University and Christopher Sims win the Nobel Prize in Economics for 2011. Sargent, a professor at New York University, is best known for his work on "rational expectations theory, " which points out that people base their actions on their expectations about the impact of government policies in the future. The implications for today are that monetary policy by lowering rates cannnot permanently lower unemployment, as people will expect higher future inflation and insist on higher wages for labor and higher interest rates for capital. Sargent did most of the signifcant work on the theory of rational expectations at the University of Minnesota from 1971 to 1987. Sims work is in statistical relationships and use of vector autoregressions to study the economy. He taught at the University of Minnesota from 1974 to 1990.

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Compared to the beginning of 2008 Fannie Mae's shares have fallen 61% and Freddie Mac's shares have fallen 65%. Congress has failed to overhaul regulatory supervision of the 2 companies that are now supposed to with the Federal Housing Administration support the mortgage markets. They are government chartered companies that provide the bulk of the finding for USA home mortgages. They own or guarantee about $5.2 trillion of home mortgages, or roughly half of all loans outstanding. The two have suffered combined losses of $11 billion in the 9 months ending march 31, 2008. There is no effective regulation of the 2 companies. The House has passed legislation creating a new regulator for the 2 companies and the Senate will vote probably this week on similiar legislation. The new regulator would have powers to increase the capital requirements of the 2 companies.

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The U.S. Treasury plans to sell off its whole stake in General Motors in 15 months. Treasury will sell about 200 millon shares to GM for $5.5 billion by Dec. 2013. The buying price for GM of $27.50 is about 8% higher than GM's closing price on Dec. 18, 2012. Treasury plans to sell the remaining 300.1 million shares within in the next 12-15 months depending on market conditions. Treasury's breakeven point is about $53 a share, and the government will lose money on the bailout compared to the AIG rescue. The government invested about $49.5 billion to help take GM through a planned Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing and reduce a huge debt load. The key in the auto bailout was preserving over 1 million jobs in the U.S. auto industry during an economc crisis.

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Changes Novartis CEO Daniel Vasella is making in the pharmaceutical business. He has hired Joe Jimenez, who is running Novartis's consumer health care business to be the new pharmaceutical division chief. Jimenez previously worked at packaged goods companies including H.J. Heinz Company. Jimenez is cutting 25% of the jobs at pharmaceutical division's headquarters in Basel to reduce bureaucracy and costs. In March he promoted Trevor Mundel and Andrin Oswald, 2 young executives, to head the drug developmet group which puts drugs through human testing and submits them for regulatory approval. This group had become too bureaucratic and slow to move and take initiative. To improve its functioning Jimenez is organizing it into small teams with each team assigned an experimental drug in Novartis's pipeline. Each team of 8 people including physicians, experts in regulatory affairs and marketing and toxicologists work together to spot potential safety issues early and discuss them with regulators to determine whether to put the drug through expensive clinical trials. Each team takes the responsibility to take its drug to the market. The pharmaceutical unit is also being organized to be more nimble. It solicits health systems early on whether its willing to pay for drugs. And Jimenez has startd 4 pilot projects in tough markets to improve relationships with payers, including the Pacific Northwest where Novartis has offered to train an HMO's nurses in aspects of heart disease. Vasella supports the generics division of Sandoz because the growth is in generics, with generics commanding 60% of the prescription volume in Germany and USA, and sales for generics up 25% this year in the generics division. And Novartis paid $39 billion for Alcon, a eye care company. Its also working aggressively in the vaccines business, which like generics enjoys double digit growth. ...

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For immigration bipartisan solutions such as the one Senator Lankford and president Biden and Senator Schumer worked out are the answer, intelligent solutions are the answer, as America will need to fill the vacant positions in its factories. As baby boomers retire Minnesota is short of workers as this story in WSJ shows. It is recruiting from Florida and Puerto Rico for people willing to relocate to the north and its severe winters. Marvin, $1.5 billion maker of windows and doors, founded in this town of Warroad near the Canadian border 112 years back can move but is attached to this town and its people. It has resisted trends of outshoring and keeps trying to get new workers replacing the ones retiring of the 700 workers at this factory.  About 2.1 million manufacturing jobs will remain unfilled by 2030 according to the Manufacturing Institute. This shows the other side of the immigration story where immigrants also add to meeting the needs of the Nation as they are absorbed over time. It is not immigration but the sudden surges that need to be handled carefully that is the problem as America will continue to need new workers to replace the workers who retire from its factories. ...

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New rules from the Biden administration make it easier for people ages 60-63 years to make up for putting less into workplace savings in earlier years with the impact of the 2009 financial crisis, loss of jobs or working parttime for a period, and smaller savings during the pandemic. People in these ages can now put in a 14% higher amount. And a maximum of $34,750 into their workplace retirement plans. This is one of the many actions taken by Biden-Harris, including increasing the amounts for Social Security, that combined with a stronger economy and job growth, lower inflation, is correcting many of the problems of the past that left seniors without enough money to retire in dignity and safety. Small steps taken in the context of bigger steps on infrastructure and chips, science, rebuilding manufacturing by investing in old unused plants and reviving them with new products- all this is creating anew future for America and the ordinary Americans. Higher wages also pushed by Biden- Harris will enable many Americans put away more in savings that the were not able to do over the decades when government policy neglected the needs of ordinary Americans. ...

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India lags behind in the number of tourists visiting the country. Part of the reason was the lack of good infrastructure in the country. Indian Railways and new highways, modern river transport has opened up remote parts of the country from the jungles of Assam to deserts of Rajasthan, the mountainous regions of Kashmir, Sikkim, Bhutan and Ladakh, Arunachal, and the river regions of the Brahmaputra river and Ganges to tourism. Compared to France with 100 million tourists a year India has about a tenth of that.  Tourism is now seen as an engine for job growth as small handicraft industries can tap into the tourist market, hotels and restaurants can add to employment. The new budget for 2025-26 recognizes this by almost tripling the 95 million euros budget for 2024 to 283 million euros in 2025. Delhi with images of pollution is a distraction yet the tourist from Europe or America can find much to see in smaller towns and metros in the country from Buddhist and Vedic civilizations thousands of years old and recent history after invasions from Western Asia and Europe since 1600, and interesting cuisine, culture, language and regional influences. ...

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US president DJT meets Indian PM Modi on the first day of his visit to the US. PBS shows the joint press conference of the two leaders as India and the US embark on a new journey. India to reach out for 1.4 billion people- and as a model for 1.7 billion people including Indonesia- reach out for Developed modern India by 2047, the 100th anniversary of India's independence from the British Empire. The US as the leading western economy meeting new challenges from China as it partners with India for 2.4 billion people living in South Asian and North American democracies and the UK/Canada/Australia/Japan the largest group of people with a common history and institutions of government based on a shared history with Britain and the Modern World it created by pioneering the Scientific and Industrial Revolution. And a shared civilization where the Bhagavad Gita meets the Authorized Version of the Bible in the religion and civilizations that provide a common heritage of the spirit. To conduct the affairs of man in ways that provide good honest governance and a shared interest in peaceful development for the welfare of humanity. ...

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Seantor Dan Sullivan and the WSJ say Alaska's economic potential and its standard of living was ignored with blanket blocking of any development of its resources. WSJ says under the Biden administration the state was turned into a nature museum.  WSJ says the state's leaders know that spoiling the environment would be mistake. Yet developing some of the state's resources would help the US in sourcing natural gas and rare earth minerals for renewable energy products. This would achieve a policy balance. One of the arguments North Dakota Governor Borghum and new US Interior Secretary makes is that China is building a coal plant every 2 weeks with 12 built in the first 6 months of 2024. As of July 2024 Statista shows China with 1161 coal plants operational, 6 times the 204 US coal plants and 4 times the 295 coal plants in India, 89 in Japan- and 90% of new coal power capacity added. This means climate change issues remain no matter what the US does. By using natural gas fired electricity the US gets transition time for the shift to renewables and can attack the cost of living, export to the EU.  ...

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Mass firings of government workers and closing of government offices created a sense of upheaval with the style of Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency. Musk says his disinterest in the workings of the government, and effort to do too much too quickly hurt his efforts, and the distraction has cost Tesla with loss of market and loss of loyalty of customers put off by DOGE style actions. Some actions were controversial such as asking federal government workers to list their 5 accomplishments each week or be fired, and are being withdrawn. Overall the media coverage created more miscomprehension for the president's goals and actions. President Trump has now distanced himself from Musk and Musk has withdrawn from the Washington scene. New reports suggest Tesla engineers now working for GM are building new EV battery technologies to drastically reduce the cost of EV's by 2028. One such report came out this week  shown in Lyrarc.com. Tesla imports its electric car batteries from China which could put it at a disadvantage in the current tariffs environment. German EV's market is collapsing in China so that Tesla faces many changes in just 6 months.  ...

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Michelle Bachelet wins Chile's presidential election with 62% of the vote in Dec. 2013.

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Carlos Tavares of Nissan is made the new CEO of Peugeot in November 2013.

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An Eritrean journalist writes about Susan Rice and Africa in the New York Times.